Tragedy: Doom Prevails All
by tori-cat-luver
Summary: Amongst the war against Lord Margarath, one might think he is the only enemy at present, but that is not so.
1. Chapter 1: The Beginning

A dark shadow passed across the Redmont Fief. An omen of misfortune.

Halt looked up at the sky with worry; he did not have a good feeling about this. Clouds were one thing, but this swallowing darkness, like a never ending night was something else. What could it mean, he wondered.

Seconds before, Baron Arald had been hosting a crucially important meeting. A war was going on, but it did not seem so, the sky was a brilliant shade of blue, and the sun was out with high voltage. Nothing could possible go wrong on a day as fine as this, or so they thought. Being orderly before the king, Baron Arald had set out a bottle of the finest wine in the cellars; he himself did not drink, for these bottles weren't cheap. King Duncan took a long slow sip, favoring the taste. Suddenly, he stopped dead, took in one last shaky breath and collapsed as the clouds blew before the sun with uncanny speed.

A minute later an ear piercing high pitch sound was heard through the town. A stealthy shadow slunk away, delighted with the wail, as it was the exact reaction he had hoped. So far all was going well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**:

**Authors Note: Please Review, I want your ideas and thoughts. PLEASE criticize me if you believe it necessary, just review and I'll write or post more.**

Will was with Alyss when it happened; everyone had worked so hard the day before, preparing for King Duncan's arrival, making sure every little thing was right, so the crafts masters gave their apprentices a well earned day off. Since it was such a beautiful day, they went outside for a picnic. Horace and Jenny had other plans, but Jenny gladly supplied Will and Alyss with some of her delicious cooking. They were in the middle of a cheery conversation when Tug whinnied a warning. The sky turned black, and they heard a shriek. Will looked over just in time to see a stealthy figure slink off. _'It's almost like a-no, it couldn't be' _he thought.

With a hurried good bye, Will leapt onto Tug and sped off to Halt's cabin, hoping Halt would know what was going on. On the way back he encountered many confused people with rumors of an attack, and asking for answers, but Will had none to give. After finally fighting his way through the pandemonium of the village, he was greatly disappointed to find that Halt was not home.

For a couple hours he was condemned to continuously turn people down, when they came looking for Halt with questions. Thinking it another townsperson, Will turned exasperatedly towards the door as he heard someone trip up the steps towards the cottage. He was therefore surprised when he heard a whinny of greeting, which was then returned by his own horse Tug. And realized with relief that it must be Gilan with news of what had happened.

Halt

Halt rode back to his little cottage in the woods, away from all the noise and chaos. He was exhausted after riding all over town and into many farther suburbs carrying messages, and arming the troops. He had observed the wine, and after he had sucked a little drop of it off his finger, he instantly recognized it. It was a poison that could be found in the woods, and if there was poison in the wine, there could only be one explanation. Their opponent in the war must be better off than they had thought. He, whoever he was, must have been preparing for this one move, to turn the few raids into an all-out war.

Halt couldn't wait until he got back to the peace and quiet of his cottage, but then a disturbing thought hit him: Will didn't know yet. Will had no idea what was going on, he was probably enjoying himself with pleasant thoughts of his date with Alyss (although he denied that it was a date), and Halt would have to be the one to break it to him that the King was dead, and that they would soon have to go on many war missions which would be more dangerous than anything young Will had ever gone through.

As he neared his cottage Halt's dread of meeting Will and having to explain everything grew, and was therefore surprised to find Will, and his old apprentice Gilan, waiting in front of his cottage, perched upon their horses. He was even more surprised to find packs, presumably carrying supplies such as food and water, balanced evenly on their backs. Gilan, swift even with his sword attached to his belt, easily slid off his horse, Blaze, and walked up to Halt. "We have a mission from Crowley, and we are to leave immediately. He will be rater annoyed that we haven't left already, but we had to wait for you. There is no time to explain, here's your pack, and we must leave now, I'll explain as we are riding." After a few seconds thought he added in a whisper, " I told Will what's happening, he's in sort of a state of shock, he thought something was going on, but nothing this bad, and I think he's pretty worried about Alyss too." And to Halt's surprise, Will did look rather down, and shocked, he wasn't his cheerful self, that was for sure. _'I must be getting old,_ thought Halt, '_I should've noticed something was wrong with Will right away. I am a RANGER after all."_


	3. Chapter 3

On the quick ride back to Castle Redmont, Gilan filled Halt in on what there mission was to be, which didn't take very long for the concept was short and easy even if the mission wouldn't necessarily be so as well. "Basically, we have to try and track whoever placed the poison in the King's wine," Gilan informed Halt. "First we have to figure how it could have been done, then track whoever was responsible," continued Gilan.

As they arrived at Castle Redmont, they hurried to the records of whom, they had traded with and where the wine could have come from. Looking through the records they were very disheartened to realize that wine had not been traded from other nations to Castle Redmont in years, but created within the kingdom itself. Morgarath must have alliances within the kingdom itself.

After agonizingly long hours of flipping through records, during which Will was mostly spending his time worrying about Alyss, he remembered something from before. "Now that I think about it, I remember seeing movement in the shadows during my da- er… outing with Alyss. It was shortly after the scream, at the time though; I thought nothing of it, for there was a breeze. But now that I look back, the leaves were moving in the wrong direction. Almost as if someone was waiting for something, then leaving so as not to be caught."

"You have a brain, use it. You should have told us this earlier," replied an exasperated Halt.

"Where was this?" added an equally stern Gilan. "Show us the spot, we might find a trail."

"Though it may prove to have been nothing," Halt stated deep in thought, "but its our best lead, so we might as well check it out."

The three rangers headed out with Will in the lead. When they came to the spot, they found what they had been hoping for: a trail. Whoever had left it had obviously been trying not to be found for they had made a pretty good attempt at hiding it. A normal person would barely have noticed it, but to a ranger's keen eyes, it was clear as daylight.

"Will, fetch our horses and our packs, we best be on our way. These may or may not be the tracks of the culprit, but we may learn something from whoever was here," ordered Halt.

Upon Will returning with the Blaze, Tug and Abelard; the three set off on foot with the horses trailing behind. "If we go by horseback, we may lose the trail," explained Gilan to Will.

**Authors Note:**

**I know these chapters are short, but I promise to write more. That is, if I get reviews. So far my reviews total is 2. It makes me sad to think only two people are reading it. So, if you want to read more, or even if you don't, please review. I am not updating a new chapter until I get at least 5 more reviews. They can all be from the same person, I don't care, I just need to know some people are actually reading what I am riding, so I am not just doing this for no reason.**


	4. Chapter 4

The three rangers tracked the mysterious man's trail until it grew dark out. "We might as well take a rest," called out Halt, "we aren't going to have much luck tracking him in this light. I know things are fairly peaceful right now, but we are entering a war and I don't want to take any chances, so we should assign watches. I'll take the first watch, and then you can take over Will, and then wake up Gilan."

The two younger Rangers curled up in their cloaks and went to sleep as Halt took his position, concealed behind a bush. In the morning, when Gilan woke the two sleeping rangers up, they set off to tracking again. A good couple of hours passed before Will broke the silence, "Look! There's more tracks!"

"Someone must have met up with him," said Halt. "We might as well find out where the newcomer came from."

"Ok!" replied Will, who hurried off in front trailing the new set of tracks backwards.

"I'm just glad he's back to his old eager self," Halt murmured to Gilan, who couldn't agree more.

Despite Will's eagerness and curiousity, he remained focused and managed to successful track the prints to the Castle of Norgate fief. The three rangers went to enter the Castle but were stopped at the gates. "I'm sorry, but no one is to be allowed in or out, not even Rangers," one of the guards stated.

"You have no authority over the ranger corps," Halt reminded the guard, "now, what has happened here?"

"Oh you haven't heard yet?" asked the other guard. "It's a very tragic matter, for it means Morgorath still has spies here. Someone attempted to assassin the Baron."

"Attempted?" questioned Halt.

"Yes," replied the first guard again, "The Baron had very nearly died, but he pulled through. Currently he is in a bad, but stable state in the infirmary."

**Authors note:**

**In case you're wondering about the characters used in this, at the time I started this story I had only read the first book, and currently I can only find the first two, so if there are major characters that come around later, sorry that they're left out.**


	5. Chapter 5

Upon hearing the tragic news from the two guards, the three rangers quickly went back through the woods following the two faint trails. "It looks like it's about to rain," commented Halt. "If we don't hurry up, there might not be any trail left."

"Yes, I suppose your right," agreed Gilan, "though I was looking forward to a cup of coffee and some rest, but I suppose we'll have to keep going and try to continue tracking even after dark."

"Should we light a torch?" questioned Will. "It might make the tracks easier to follow."

"But it would also alert those two that we are tracking them, and they obviously don't want to be," pointed out Halt.

"True," agreed Will.

The three rangers continued tracking in a companionable silence for some time until they started to hear some faint noises. At first Will believed they were just the usual nighttime noises of the forest; the swish of the trees and sounds of the nocturnal creatures, but after a while he realized that they were not natural. He started to mention it, when Halt put up his hand, signaling for silence."That's them, we must be quiet since we don't want them discovering us before the time is right," Halt whispered in a barely audible voice.

"Did you here something?" a man in all black called out quietly.

"What?" replied his companion. "Are you hearing things again?"

"You did remember to cover your tracks, didn't you?" the man asked.

"Of course I did, who do you think would be following us? A big scary ranger?" his companion taunted him.

"You know what I think about rangers," the man replied with contempt. They're good for nothing fraudulent magicians. Its my father who's afraid of them. Not me."

**Authors Note:**

**Thanks for the reviews! Somehow my chapters are getting shorter and shorter. That's not necessarily good. At least I can update more often. My 2 weeks of freedom between school and a busy summer are over, so sorry if I'm not able to update as often now. **


	6. Chapter 6

"Whirrrr," and arrow shot forward, barely missing where the black clad man was sitting.

"Whoa," he shouted with surprise.

Just then three rangers crept out of the cover of the trees into the clearing where the two men were camped. "Don't even think about moving," Halt told them coldly, pointing his arrow at the man wearing black while Gilan pointed his at the other man.

The black clad man was overconfident in how easily he could evade the rangers. "Why don't you go play with your toy weapons over there and leave us alone," he replied with a sneer as he swung back to grab his sword. A large scream was released from his mouth as he fell flat on his face in pain, an arrow sticking out of his right calf. With the speed and accuracy of that arrow, all though of escape and rebellion was forgotten by the two men. Defeated, they allowed Will to take a rope and tie them up tightly against two different trees.

Will got a fire started and began to cook dinner after the ok from Halt to light one. Halt reasoned that they had already trapped who they had been following and it wouldn't be a bad thing if some of the kings men came, although they were definitely not needed. As Will did that, Halt approached the black clad man, who appeared to be the leader of the two.

"What's your name?" Halt asked as he began his interrogation of the two men. Although they didn't know for sure that these two men had been responsible for the poisonings, they had been obviously up to no good no matter what they had been doing. Halt needed to find out that.

"Doom," the man in black replied.

"I know you are doomed to be punished, man, but first I need your name," replied Halt in a cool voice, not understanding the imprisoned man.

"No you idiot fraud," the prisoner said in reply, "not doom, like you are, but Doom. I already answered your question. But in case you are so dimwitted as to need more help to understand I'll give you my full name, Doom Morgorath.

**Well, there it is, one new chapter. Ahhhhh, I feel so bad. Yes, I've been busy and waking up early and stuff, but I have had time to write more, I've just been too lazy. I'm sorry people reading this. I shouldn't be so lazy, but hey, I bet you all have been lazy and procrastinating about something. So, please don't blame me for how long it took me to get this chapter out. **


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